WARNING: CONTAINS NUDITY

My inspiration generally comes from the things in everyday life. Fat Summer was no exception.

I always go to beach on the weekends. During one of my trips I saw an overweight lady in a funny swim suit. When she was leaving the beach she gathered everything up and took a big ball from his grandson, (as in my image Fat Summer) while he was cleaning himself up. She had such a pleasant smile and I found that this scene got stuck in my head.

I wanted to make this image show that physical beauty and a perfect body isn't everything in life, and that a person can be happy even without a perfect body.

When I start a new piece I always do a lot of research to gather new ideas that I can then build on. Only when I have done this do I start the modeling process. Gathering references is very important and will help you create a clean image efficiently.

I started the modeling process with a simple base mesh (Fig.01).

Fig. 01

I worked on some basic volumes and anatomy in ZBrush. After that I went into Softimage where I cleaned up the model and did the proper topology for it. This helped me a lot when posing the model. Although I only did this model for a single image, I always pay attention to the proper loops so I can work nicely on the details (Fig.02).

Fig. 02

The anatomy was very interesting to study because it was very challenging to make the skin look like it was heavy, and make the fat and cellulite look correct. After I had modeled the clothing a lot of the body was hidden, but I always pay attention to the anatomy because it is a very useful thing to practice. It was a personal project too, which was an extra reason to model the whole body (Fig.03 - 04).

Fig. 03

Fig. 04

Whilst modeling the "T pose" I didn't try to finished the whole model, because if I did then when I posed the model I would have to remodel some parts. So I did about 60% of the body during the "T pose" and then I completed the modeling after posing. The model remained symmetrical up until the point where I had posed it; when I do this it makes the body look more natural (Fig.05).